Crying silent tears and shaking, Leah Charles-King queued at her GP’s surgery, a handwritten message in her hand.
He said: ‘If you send me home, I’m going to kill myself. I’m suicidal and I need help now.’
“It was that forceful,” recalls the TV presenter, best known for Channel 4’s A Place In The Sun.
Just two days earlier, Leah, then 30, had given a joyful performance on a live ITV show, but it masked a mental health crisis that had been brewing for some years. She had experienced periods of manic highs and lows, in which she became impulsive and barely stopped to rest, followed by crushing depressions since she was in her early 20s.
Leah Charles-King’s GP diagnosed depression and prescribed antidepressants, but they didn’t seem to help, because she didn’t have depression.
Place in the Sun host Leah Charles-King masked her heartbreak on TV
“She didn’t sleep or eat for days, but she was full of energy, had quick thoughts, and was very impulsive,” Leah recalls.
‘I also had periods where I felt suicidal and depressed.
“I could see something wasn’t right because it was so erratic.”
His GP diagnosed him with depression and put him on antidepressants, but they didn’t seem to help, and there was a reason for that: he didn’t have depression.
On the day she handed her desperate note to staff at her GP surgery, they called an ambulance to take her to hospital, where a specialist diagnosed Leah with bipolar disorder. What’s more, she was told that the antidepressants she had been taking for years could have worsened her symptoms.
While depression typically leads to intense sadness, pessimism, and low energy, bipolar disorder can cause periods of those symptoms, but alternated with episodes of mania when people become intensely energetic.
Those affected may also engage in impulsive and potentially harmful behaviors, such as spending unreasonable amounts of money.
Even though the two conditions are “very different” and require different treatment, “almost 70 percent of people with bipolar disorder tell us they had a previous diagnosis of depression,” Simon Kitchen, director executive of the charity Bipolar UK. .
The diagnosis of bipolar disorder is based on a doctor’s evaluation; The problem is that if someone with bipolar disorder is misdiagnosed with depression, they could be prescribed medications that can exacerbate their mood swings.
“Antidepressants have been found to be helpful for some bipolar patients, but for most they are ineffective and can induce mood instability,” says Guy Goodwin, emeritus professor of psychiatry at the University of Oxford.
They do this by “activating brain networks that are predisposed to switch from normal mood to hypomania.” [a less extreme form of mania, which does not cause psychosis but can cause risky and reckless behaviour] — the drug causes the change,” he explains.
However, in a survey for Bipolar UK in 2022, 55 percent of the 2,458 people with bipolar disorder surveyed reported being given antidepressants.
The charity is also aware of cases where patients have been wrongly diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression when antidepressants did not work, in some cases leading them to take stronger medications.
The presenter had experienced periods of manic highs and lows, where she became impulsive and barely stopped to rest, followed by crushing depressions since she was in her early 20s.
Bipolar UK is campaigning for GPs to “think about bipolar before prescribing antidepressants for the first time”, says spokesperson Mark Hayward.
The charity says it takes almost ten years on average to receive a correct bipolar diagnosis after the first symptoms appear, despite it being very common, with more than a million people in the UK living with the condition.
GPS [are] “It takes time and assessing patients’ experiences and backgrounds takes time,” says Professor Goodwin.
“Patients with bipolar disorder do not receive the medical care from mental health specialists that they need and that is a major problem – it is truly a scandal.”
Leah spent almost a decade going back and forth to her GP before getting the right diagnosis. This was despite her having raised fears that she might have the condition, after catching a 2009 EastEnders storyline which featured a character with bipolar disorder and identifying with her erratic behaviour. But her doctor rejected the idea.
“My GP said, ‘There’s no way you can be bipolar; “You’re too articulate,” Leah recalls. “You’re too self-aware. You’re too aware of your feelings and emotions and the state you’re in. People with bipolar disorder are crazy, and you don’t seem crazy right now.” ‘
Professor Goodwin, who is also a medical adviser to Bipolar UK, dismisses this view as an “absolutely ridiculous” view.
“Bipolar disorder is slightly associated with higher IQ and higher verbal skills,” he says.
Leah says, however, she was told, “You’re just depressed, keep taking these antidepressants.”
She was first prescribed them when she was 20, which is what she did, but in the meantime her symptoms were “getting worse and worse and worse.”
Bipolar disorder can be difficult to diagnose, says Professor Goodwin, because while feelings of “worthlessness” are easy for health professionals to recognize as depression, the manic symptoms that people with bipolar disorder also experience “are difficult to recognize as a disease”.
“That’s because they often appear to be in good health—higher energy, higher enthusiasm, higher engagement—and only when that turns into something a little more toxic, when it turns into irritability, aggression, inability to sleep or concentrate, is it when it becomes a more recognizable disease,” he explains. This side can also manifest as impulsiveness, hypersexuality (with many sexual partners), and spending large sums of money.
Patients are also less likely to seek help when they are manic, meaning doctors won’t see the variability in their mood. In some cases, people experience mania characterized by psychosis and hallucinations, in which they completely lose touch with reality.
At her worst, Leah went from feeling so depressed she could barely get out of bed and “couldn’t even brush my teeth,” to suddenly changing “overnight” and beginning to exhibit “full-blown mania.” (something that happened before). she received the correct treatment).
At those times, her friends praised her for being “super hyperactive and full of energy,” believing that she had come out of her depression and was back in “top shape.”
However, it could turn in the opposite direction with alarming speed. Two days before her desperate note at the GP’s practice, Leah had donned a bright yellow dress and made her live television appearance; Just two hours later, a fearful friend had to convince her from the top of a building.
“I couldn’t take the mental torture,” Leah says. ‘My friend convinced me and then I wrote that suicide note to my doctor.
‘I felt like “this is my last chance.” If I didn’t get help today, I knew what I was going to do, so I gathered the last bit of strength I had left.
Experts warn that people should not suddenly stop taking antidepressants without first discussing their treatment plan with their doctor.
“I was so impulsive in this mania and I was so fed up with all the pain and anguish that I had had enough,” she recalls.
After being seen by a specialist, Leah received a combination of bipolar medication and talk therapy and her mental wellbeing improved massively – she landed her dream job in 2021, presenting A Place In The Sun.
But now that she’s 40, she’s still angry about having spent so many years with the wrong diagnosis and treatment: “Antidepressants can make a person’s illness much worse,” she says.
But experts warn that people should not suddenly stop taking antidepressants without first discussing their treatment plan with their doctor, as this can lead to serious side effects.
Professor Goodwin says official guidelines recommend that treatment for bipolar disorder includes “medications that are not just antidepressants, but have an element of mood stabilization.”
‘Lithium appears to be the most effective against all manifestations of bipolar disorder (depression, mania and mixed states). [and] It appears to be effective in a way that other drugs are not.
For more information about bipolar disorder, visit: bipolaruk.org. If you need urgent help, you can contact Samaritans for free on 116 123; email: jo@samaritans.org; or visit samaritans.org to find your nearest branch.